On Saturday, Meta released its newest Llama 4 multimodal AI models in a surprise weekend move that caught some AI experts off guard. The announcement touted Llama 4 Scout and Llama 4 Maverick as major advancements, with Meta claiming top performance in their categories and an enormous 10 million token context window for Scout. But so far the open-weights models have received an initial mixed-to-negative reception from the AI community, highlighting a familiar tension between AI marketing and user experience.

"The vibes around llama 4 so far are decidedly mid," said independent AI researcher Simon Willison in a short interview with Ars Technica. Willison often checks the community pulse around open source and open weights AI releases in particular.

While Meta positions Llama 4 in competition with closed-model giants like OpenAI and Google, the company continues to use the term "open source" despite licensing restrictions that prevent truly open use. As we have noted in the past with previous Llama releases, "open weights" more accurately describes Meta's approach. Those who sign in and accept the license terms can download the two smaller Llama 4 models from Hugging Face or llama.com.

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On Monday, biotech company Colossal announced what it views as its first successful de-extinction: the dire wolf. These large predators were lost during the Late Pleistocene extinctions that eliminated many large land mammals from the Americas near the end of the most recent glaciation. Now, in a coordinated PR blitz, the company is claiming that clones of grey wolves with lightly edited genomes have essentially brought the dire wolf back. (Both Time and The New Yorker were given exclusive access to the animals ahead of the announcement.)

The dire wolf is a relative of the now-common grey wolf, with clear differences apparent between the two species' skeletons. Based on the sequence of two new dire wolf genomes, the researchers at Colossal conclude that dire wolves formed a distinct branch within the canids over 2.5 million years ago. For context, that's over twice as long as brown and polar bears are estimated to have been distinct species. Dire wolves are also large, typically the size of the largest grey wolf populations. Comparisons between the new genomes and those of other canids show that the dire wolf also had a light-colored coat.

That large of an evolutionary separation means there are likely a lot of genetic differences between the grey and dire wolves. Colossal's internal and unpublished analysis suggested that key differences could be made by editing 14 different areas of the genome, with 20 total edits required. The new animals are reported to have had 15 variants engineered in. It's not clear what accounts for the difference, and a Colossal spokesperson told Ars: "We are not revealing all of the edits that we made at this point."

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Balatro is certainly habit-forming, but there's nothing to be won or lost, other than time, by playing it. While the game has you using standard playing cards and poker hands as part of its base mechanics, it does not have in-app purchases, loot boxes, or any kind of online play or enticement to gambling, beyond the basics of risk and reward.

Yet many YouTube creators have had their Balatro videos set to the traffic-dropping "Age-restricted" status, allegedly due to "depictions or promotions of casino websites or apps," with little recourse for appeal.

The Balatro University channel detailed YouTube's recent concerns about "online gambling" in a video posted last weekend. Under policies that took effect March 19, YouTube no longer allows any reference to gambling sites or applications "not certified by Google." Additionally, content with "online gambling content"—"excluding online sports betting and depictions of in-person gambling"—cannot be seen by anyone signed out of YouTube or registered as under 18 years old.

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Google started cramming AI features into search in 2024, but last month marked an escalation. With the release of AI Mode, Google previewed a future in which searching the web does not return a list of 10 blue links. Google says it's getting positive feedback on AI Mode from users, so it's forging ahead by adding multimodal functionality to its robotic results.

AI Mode relies on a custom version of the Gemini large language model (LLM) to produce results. Google confirms that this model now supports multimodal input, which means you can now show images to AI Mode when conducting a search.

As this change rolls out, the search bar in AI Mode will gain a new button that lets you snap a photo or upload an image. The updated Gemini model can interpret the content of images, but it gets a little help from Google Lens. Google notes that Lens can identify specific objects in the images you upload, passing that context along so AI Mode can make multiple sub-queries, known as a "fan-out technique."

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Tech companies' worst nightmare ahead of Donald Trump's election has already come true, as the US and China are now fully engaged in a tit-for-tat trade war, where China claims it expects to be better positioned to withstand US blows long-term.

Trump has claimed that Americans must take their "medicine," bearing any pains from tariffs while waiting for supposed long-term gains from potentially pressuring China—and every other country, including islands of penguins—into a more favorable trade deal. On Monday, tech companies across the US likely winced when Trump threatened to heap "additional" 50 percent tariffs on China, after China announced retaliatory 34 percent tariffs on US imports and restricted US access to rare earth metals.

Posting on Truth Social, Trump gave China one day to withdraw tariffs to avoid higher US tariffs.

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After giving CinemaCon attendees a sneak peek last week, Paramount Pictures has publicly released the trailer for Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, the eighth installment of the blockbuster spy franchise starring Tom Cruise as IMF agent Ethan Hunt, and a sequel to the events that played out in 2023's Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning.

This may, or may not, end up being Cruise's last film in the franchise; everyone's being pretty cagey about that question. But the trailer certainly gives us everything we've come to expect from the Mission: Impossible films: high stakes, global political intrigue, and of course, lots and lots of spectacular stunt work, including Cruise hanging precariously mid-air from a 1930s Boeing Stearman biplane.

(Spoilers for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning below.)

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A second unvaccinated child has died of measles in Texas, according to state health officials and the hospital in Lubbock, Texas, that treated the child.

“We are deeply saddened to report that a school-aged child who was recently diagnosed with measles has passed away," a representative for UMC Health System in Lubbock said in a statement emailed to Ars Technica. "The child was receiving treatment for complications of measles while hospitalized. It is important to note that the child was not vaccinated against measles and had no known underlying health conditions. This unfortunate event underscores the importance of vaccination."

US Health Secretary and anti-vaccine advocate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. identified the child as 8-year-old Daisy Hildebrand. Media reports indicated that she died early Thursday morning.

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A White House investigation has reportedly identified the mistakes that led to a journalist being added to a Signal text chain in which bombing plans were discussed hours before the strikes occurred.

As previously reported, National Security Advisor Michael Waltz last month invited The Atlantic Editor-in-Chief Jeffrey Goldberg to a Signal chat in which top Trump administration officials discussed a plan for bombing Houthi targets in Yemen. Waltz publicly claimed that Goldberg's number was "sucked in" to his phone and added to a different person's contact information without his knowledge.

A report published yesterday by The Guardian said a forensic review by the White House IT office "found that Waltz's phone had saved Goldberg's number as part of an unlikely series of events that started when Goldberg emailed the Trump campaign last October." The Guardian reported:

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Nintendo's barrage of Switch announcements over the last two weeks have also come with changes to the way Nintendo treats physical and digital copies of games.

Digital games can now become "virtual game cards," facilitating slightly more flexible sharing of digitally purchased games between multiple Switch systems owned by the same person or family of people. And physical copies of games can now be either traditional game cards—little bits of plastic with the game stored on a flash memory chip inside—or "Game-Key cards," which look the same from the outside but don't actually have any game data stored on them.

A Game-Key card has a "key" stored on it that prompts a download of the game data from Nintendo's servers the first time you insert it. From then on, the game behaves like a cross between a digital download and a physical game—all of the game's content has to be on the console's internal storage or a microSD Express card, but you need to have the Game-Key card inserted before the game will launch.

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Formula 1 held the third round of its 2025 season at Suzuka in Japan yesterday. The race used to be held toward the end of the calendar, but F1 now visits while the cherry blossoms are blooming, which certainly makes for some good visuals. With a hefty timezone difference between Suzuka and fans in Europe and the US, a difficult decision must be made: Do I stay up all night to watch it live? Let's just say I was glad I did that for qualifying on Friday night—and I was equally glad I slept in the following night and watched the race on Sunday morning.

The circuit at Suzuka is one of the few old-school tracks left on the calendar. Along with places like Monaco, Catalyunya, and Spa-Francorchamps, it's a real driver's track; anyone who's played it in Forza, Gran Turismo, or the racing franchise of your choice will know what I mean. The first corner is flat after a long straight. The left-right-left-right of turns 3–7 might be the best set of esses on any track in the world. It even crosses over itself in a figure-eight.

Like Spa, though, some bits have become less of a challenge for modern F1 cars with their immense amounts of power and grip. 130R used to be a test of nerve, but now the cars barely notice it as a corner.

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After dealing with years of widespread reports of "stick drift" on the original Switch Joy-Cons, Nintendo watchers have been hoping the Switch 2 would make use of magnetic Hall effect sensors that avoid most of the physical wear and tear that causes the problem. Now, though, a Nintendo executive has confirmed that the Joy-Cons on the new console won't make use of the more reliable but more expensive technology.

"Well, the Joy-Con 2's controllers have been designed from the ground up," Nintendo of America Senior Vice President of Product Development & Publishing Nate Bihldorff told enthusiast site Nintendo Life in a recent interview. "They're not Hall effect sticks, but they feel really good."

The confirmation comes after Nintendo pointedly refused to offer details about the Switch 2's joystick hardware at a roundtable Q&A session attended by Ars last week. When a reporter asked whether stick drift "is the sort of thing that has been improved with the Joy-Con 2 and the Pro Controller 2 as well," Switch 2 Technical Director Tetsuya Sasaki responded (via a translator) that the "new Joy-Con 2 controllers have been designed from the ground up from scratch to have bigger movement, and also a lot smoother movement."

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There is no action star quite like Jackie Chan, who made his name in the Hong Kong movie industry starting in the late 1970s and developed his own signature style: combining slapstick physical comedy with acrobatics and martial arts, and designing astonishing stunts—all of which he performed himself along with his own handpicked stunt team. His stunt sequences and fight choreography have influenced everything from The Matrix and Kill Bill to the John Wick franchise and Kung Fu Panda (in which he voiced Master Monkey).

Born on April 7, 1954, Chan studied acrobatics, martial arts, and acting as a child at the Peking Opera School's China Drama Academy and became one of the Seven Little Fortunes. Those skills served him well in his early days as a Hong Kong stuntman, which eventually landed him a gig as an extra and stunt double on Bruce Lee's 1972 film, Fist of Fury. He also appeared in a minor role in Lee's Enter the Dragon (1973).

Initially, Hong Kong producers, impressed by Chan's skills, wanted to mold him into the next Lee, but that just wasn't Chan's style. Chan found his milieu when director Yuen Woo-ping cast him in 1978's kung fu comedy Snake in the Eagle's Shadow and gave Chan creative freedom over the stunt work. It was Drunken Master, released that same year, that established Chan as a rising talent, and he went on to appear in more than 150 movies, becoming one of Hong Kong's biggest stars.

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Elon Musk’s so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has plans to stage a “hackathon” next week in Washington, DC. The goal is to create a single “mega API”—a bridge that lets software systems talk to one another—for accessing IRS data, sources tell WIRED. The agency is expected to partner with a third-party vendor to manage certain aspects of the data project. Palantir, a software company cofounded by billionaire and Musk associate Peter Thiel, has been brought up consistently by DOGE representatives as a possible candidate, sources tell WIRED.

Two top DOGE operatives at the IRS, Sam Corcos and Gavin Kliger, are helping to orchestrate the hackathon, sources tell WIRED. Corcos is a health-tech CEO with ties to Musk’s SpaceX. Kliger attended UC Berkeley until 2020 and worked at the AI company Databricks before joining DOGE as a special adviser to the director at the Office of Personnel Management (OPM). Corcos is also a special adviser to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.

Since joining Musk’s DOGE, Corcos has told IRS workers that he wants to pause all engineering work and cancel current attempts to modernize the agency’s systems, according to sources with direct knowledge who spoke with WIRED. He has also spoken about some aspects of these cuts publicly: "We've so far stopped work and cut about $1.5 billion from the modernization budget. Mostly projects that were going to continue to put us down the death spiral of complexity in our code base," Corcos told Laura Ingraham on Fox News in March.

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Federal Communications Commission Chairman Brendan Carr is taking a hard line against broadcast TV stations accused of bias against Republicans and President Trump. To pressure broadcasters, Carr is invoking the rarely enforced news distortion policy that was developed starting in the late 1960s and says the FCC should consider revoking broadcast licenses.

The FCC has regulatory authority over broadcasters with licenses to use the public airwaves. But Carr's two immediate predecessors—Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Pai—both said that punishing stations based on the content of news programs would violate the First Amendment right to free speech.

Rosenworcel and Pai's agreement continued a decades-long trend of the FCC easing itself out of the news-regulation business. Two other former FCC chairs—Republican Alfred Sikes and Democrat Tom Wheeler—have urged Carr to change course.

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When Maureen Long talks to the public about her work, she likes to ask her audience to close their eyes and think of a landscape with incredible geology. She hears a lot of the same suggestions: Iceland, the Grand Canyon, the Himalayas. “Nobody ever says Connecticut,” says Long, a geologist at Yale University in New Haven in that state.

And yet Connecticut—along with much of the rest of eastern North America—holds important clues about Earth’s history. This region, which geologists call the eastern North American margin, essentially spans the US eastern seaboard and a little farther north into Atlantic Canada. It was created over hundreds of millions of years as slivers of Earth’s crust collided and merged. Mountains rose, volcanoes erupted and the Atlantic Ocean was born.

Much of this geological history has become apparent only in the past decade or so, after scientists blanketed the United States with seismometers and other instruments to illuminate geological structures hidden deep in Earth’s crust. The resulting findings include many surprises—from why there are volcanoes in Virginia to how the crust beneath New England is weirdly crumpled.

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It's difficult to underestimate the massive influence that Disney's 1982 cult science fiction film, TRON, had on both the film industry—thanks to combining live action with what were then groundbreaking visual effects, rife with computer-generated imagery—and on nerd culture at large. Over the ensuing decades there has been one sequel, an animated TV series, a comic book miniseries, video games, and theme park attractions, all modeled on director Steve Lisberg's original fictional world.

Now we're getting a third installment in the film franchise: TRON: Ares, directed by Joachim Rønning (Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales, Maleficent: Mistress of Evil), that serves as a standalone sequel to 2010's TRON: Legacy. Disney just released the first trailer and poster art, and while the footage is short on plot, it's got the show-stopping visuals we've come to expect from all things TRON.

(Spoilers for ending of TRON: Legacy below.)

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Road trips with just two people always have their awkward silences. In Dustland Delivery, my character, a sharpshooter, has tried to break the ice with the blacksmith he hired a few towns back, with only intermittent success.

Remember that bodyguard, the one I unsuccessfully tried to flirt with at that bar? The blacksmith was uninterested. What about that wily junk dealer, or the creepy cemetery? Silence. She only wanted to discuss "Abandoned train" and "Abandoned factory," even though, in this post-apocalypse, abandonment was not that rare. But I made a note to look out for any rusted remains; stress and mood are far trickier to fix than hunger and thirst.

Dustland Delivery, available through Steam for Windows (and Proton/Steam Deck), puts you in the role typically taken up by NPCs in other post-apocalyptic RPGs. You're a trader, buying cheap goods in one place to sell at a profit elsewhere, and working the costs of fuel, maintenance, and raider attacks into your margins. You're in charge of everything on your trip: how fast you drive, when to rest and set up camp, whether to approach that caravan of pickups or give them a wide berth.

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The start-up Colossal Biosciences aims to use gene-editing technology to bring back the woolly mammoth and other extinct species. Recently, the company achieved major milestones: last year, they generated stem cells for the Asian elephant, the mammoth’s closest living relative, and this month they published photos of genetically modified mice with long, mammoth-like coats. According to the company’s founders, including Harvard and MIT professor George Church, these advances take Colossal a big step closer to their goal of using mammoths to combat climate change by restoring Arctic grassland ecosystems. Church also claims that Colossal’s woolly mammoth program will help protect endangered species like the Asian elephant, saying “we’re injecting money into conservation efforts.”

In other words, the scientific advances Colossal makes in their lab will result in positive changes from the tropics to the Arctic, from the soil to the atmosphere.

Colossal’s Jurassic Park-like ambitions have captured the imagination of the public and investors, bringing its latest valuation to $10 billion. And the company’s research does seem to be resulting in some technical advances. But I’d argue that the broader effort to de-extinct the mammoth is—as far as conservation efforts go—incredibly misguided. Ultimately, Colossal’s efforts won’t end up being about helping wild elephants or saving the climate. They’ll be about creating creatures for human spectacle, with insufficient attention to the costs and opportunity costs to human and animal life.

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The US Space Force announced Friday it selected SpaceX, United Launch Alliance, and Blue Origin for $13.7 billion in contracts to deliver the Pentagon's most critical military satellites to orbit into the early 2030s.

These missions will launch the government's heaviest national security satellites, like the National Reconnaissance Office's large, bus-sized spy platforms, and deploy them into bespoke orbits. These types of launches often demand heavy-lift rockets with long-duration upper stages that can cruise through space for six or more hours.

The contracts awarded Friday are part of the next phase of the military's space launch program once dominated by United Launch Alliance, the 50-50 joint venture between legacy defense contractors Boeing and Lockheed Martin.

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AI image generator Midjourney released its first new model in quite some time today; dubbed V7, it's a ground-up rework that is available in alpha to users now.

There are two areas of improvement in V7: the first is better images, and the second is new tools and workflows.

Starting with the image improvements, V7 promises much higher coherence and consistency for hands, fingers, body parts, and "objects of all kinds." It also offers much more detailed and realistic textures and materials, like skin wrinkles or the subtleties of a ceramic pot.

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